zoo_tycoon_wiki_archivefandomcom-20200214-history
Jagged Fang Designs
Jagged Fang Designs (commonly contracted to JFD) is a disbanded Zoo Tycoon 2 modding team founded in 2010 by BenZooMaster and MrGorsh, this team has a heavy focus on two things, Prehistoric Life and restoring it as realistically as possible, this however also made something a huge priority for the team: coding. The team heavily features some very talented coders from various parts of the community and have allowed many of their creations to become as realistic as Zoo Tycoon 2 will allow. JFD as a designing team disbanded right at the beginning of 2017. History Founding Jagged Fang Designs was founded sometime in 2010, the precise date is unknown due to the team having been working in secret for a while before revealing themselves to the public later that year, by two designers, BenZooMaster, a long time member of the Zoo Tycoon community, and MrGorsh, at the time a new member of the Zoo Tycoon community and a partially active part of the JPOG community. The team started off reasonably small as most teams usually do, consisting of a mere four members, BenZooMaster, MrGorsh, Spino77 (later to be known as Slash) and RaptorSpinoRex, with BenZooMaster doing the rigging and UV Mapping for the team, MrGorsh doing models and skins, Spino77 doing the coding and RSR doing some skinning. The first project set about by these four was a remake of the Carnotaurus featured in Zoo Tycoon 2: Extinct Animals. The First Recruits Shortly after the founding the team was in near-constant activity, with much of it being directed at the Carnotaurus remake and some other parts being dedicated to the first public known version of the Deinonychus remake (currently on overall version 6) however, there were a few people outside of the team who were being given sneak looks at the projects by one of the founders, they were Okeanos Saviour and Iben, both long-standing members of the Zoo Tycoon community, both would eventually be hauled into Jagged Fang Designs by the founder, Okeanos as a skinner and coder at first and Iben as just a coder and possible variant creator at the time. Both Okeanos and Iben accepted the proposal to join almost immediately as it was offered to them, expanding the teams original four to six members. The Unveiling Shortly after this Jagged Fang Designs was revealed to the public, after having put up a promotional video on YouTube they made a topic on Northern Skies, they were greeted quite warmly by the public with their main post talking about the team and explaining their purpose as a team focusing around prehistoric life and then revealing the Zsphere model of the Deinonychus remake followed swiftly by the Carnotaurus remake. Carnotaurus Original.png|The first Carnotaurus by JFD DeinonOriginal.png|The first public version of the Deinonychus Remake More Members and Less Members Over time Jagged Fang Designs gained more and more popularity, many enjoyed the teams projects, and some extra people joined the team, Jullren joined the team as a result of Okeanos prodding BenZooMaster for a few days and promising that Jullren would code for the team, and some simply disappeared like RSR, but still, with so few members of some trades like meshing, progress was slowly grinding to a hault, during this time a small glitch in the JFD Deinonychus appeared, it walked through walls, it was something few on the team knew how to fix at the time and many thought nifcoding was the problem, which it indeed turned out to be, but still they turned to outside help, after a brief talk the team decided to contact Ludozoo (Trygon at the time and at current), another famous designer from the community, after agreeing to help fix the bug Ludo quickly found another bug, after nifcoding the animal had two elbows, it was bizarre, quickly this phenomenon spread throughout the other Deinonychosaur remake being worked on by the team, the Velociraptor, and suddenly the entire team was in uproar within itself over such a minor bug, within days however a solution had been found, and as a result of his help the team had another quick discussion and decided to invite him in, he accepted happily and the team increased to 7 members. During this time period the Carnotaurus remake was released to the public and many of the team continues their assigned tasks, with several new animals appearing like the Kentrosaurus and the Stegosaurus. However these new projects were not the only thing that appeared, another person was recruited onto the team, Milchman, after Iben suggested him to the team stating the clear advantages having a coder of his level would bring to the team and the teams creations, most of the team was quite satisfied with this, however BenZooMaster showed some reluctance but was also eventually convinced of letting Milchman join. This was a decision that no one on the team has regretted or currently regrets, Milchman provided some incredable code for some of the animals that were being made at the time such as the Stegosaurus including proper nesting and a mounting behaviour made using animations already ingame. After this one extra member was added to the team, Jimmy Hoopz, brought in as a skinner. A month later the latest member of Jagged Fang Designs was brought in by Spino77 (then known as Slash), Veredant Gregor, previously known as King Hoopla, an excellent coder and veteran of the Zoo Tycoon community. Current Status At current Jagged Fang Designs is quite quiet, far from the team that used to update on an almost weekly basis they have become quite secretive, with even their main site Tethys being dead silent, having released two things at the end of 2012, a Leaellynasaura and Minmi and having released the Zoo Tycoon 2 ENB Series in 2013 and having revealed Generation III in 2014 the team has once again returned to its usual silence, however, the current team consists of the following members with the following positions - BenZooMaster - UV Mapper, Rigger, Skeleton Creator, Animator, Genital Handler MrGorsh - Skinner & Mesher Okeanos Saviour - Skinner & Mesher Iben - Coder, Skinner, Mesher, Public Relations Manager Trygon - Skinner & Mesher Milchman - Coder Veredant Gregor - Coder On January 1st, 2017, JFD announced they were disbanding and no longer working for the ZT2 community as a full-fledged team (besides a trio of now former members interested in keep going). However they released a pack with 10 animal remakes of Zoo Tycoon 2: Extinct Animals. However, none of these remakes included advanced coding, and they were designed as separate animals from the EA originals. Their last releases were: * Aepyornis maximus * Ankylosaurus * Deinonychus * Kentrosaurus * Palaeoloxodon falconeri * Protarchaeopteryx * Stegosaurus * Stokesosaurus * Utahraptor * Velociraptor Unfortunately, tragedy struck as team leader BenZooMaster was accused of running a Discord server which distributed cringe and he took his own life to avoid losing subscribers. Projects Past Projects In the past, Jagged Fang Designs has worked almost exclusively on remaking the entire of Zoo Tycoon 2 Extinct Animals, making unique renders for their re-remakes of their past projects in the form of gifs that slowly transition between each skin an animal has and shows the animals topology in full for all life stages. Their released past projects include their Carnotaurus Remake (no longer available) and two bonus downloads, a pair of Australian dinosaurs known as Minmi and Leaellynasaura, each coming with their own objects or shelter and with the Minmi featuring model variation. The following is a full list of their currently revealed projects, it is unknown whether or not they will be released at this time - *Deinonychus *Velociraptor *Utahraptor *Aurochs *Quagga *Stegosaurus *Kentrosaurus *Ankylosaurus *Protarchaeopteryx *Pachycephalosaurus *Aepyornis (Elephant Bird) *Dwarf Sicilian Elephant *Stokesosaurus *Dodo *Thylacine *Default Theme Remake Current Projects Jagged Fang Designs current projects are unknown, however, on Febuary 11th of 2014 they revealed a new version of their remake for the default games Dodo, and announcing the final phase of their projects, Generation III, the third and final generation of JFD projects, many of which have been stated to feature new coding and animations along with the usual complete upgrades to models and skins. The only revealed thing about this generation so far however is a sub-par Dodo animation. However, in recent months the team has posted a few video's to their YouTube channel, having posted two video's that could be considered directly related to Generation III, one of a ceratopsian base being animated and another showing the construction of a skeleton for a basic mosasaur. The team themselves have not actually confirmed if these are indeed continuations of past JFD projects or if they are even projects related to Zoo Tycoon 2 modding at all. Another recent hint as to their current projects has come in the form of a Let's Play Channel which features several Zoo Tycoon 2 series, the latest of which features biome re-skins and new biomes that are claimed to have been made by JFD and given to the channels owner for alpha testing. The authenticity of these statements has yet to be confirmed with the team mostly being silent on the matter when directly questioned about it. Available Releases Jagged Fang Designs currently has five released downloads, below are links to each downloads respective topic on various forums - *Carnotaurus Remake *Leaellynasaura amicagraphica *Minmi paravertebra *Zoo Tycoon 2 ENB Series : Vanilla *Zoo Tycoon 2 ENB Series : Cinematic * Cat Climber Remake Arguments and Controversy The Dodo After Jagged Fang Designs revealed their Dodo remake there was an argument begun by several members of the Zoo Tycoon community, previously Aurora Designs had remade and released a Dodo to the public, satisfying many as Aurora Designs goal is to remake the entire game, however when Jagged Fang Designs revealed their Dodo it was met by outrage from some members of the Zoo Tycoon community, while most people accepted it and enjoyed it as an alternative rendition of the plump little bird, others were angry that another team had dared to remake an animal already done by another team. This eventually led up to a large argument mostly fuelled by people who thought Jagged Fang Designs and Aurora Designs were in direct competition with each other, while this is partially true with both teams having similar, but not the same, goals, it is nonetheless false in many ways, the first being that Aurora Designs had a different overall goal and a different way of rendering out the Dodo, while Jagged Fang Designs overall goal was also different and they too had a different way of rendering the Dodo. This argument eventually cooled down after Ludozoo, a moderator at Gaia, stated that those continuing with the ludicrous argument would be warned and cleansed the topic of almost all traces of the argument. The Thylacine Once more, a similar argument to the one over the Dodo was born, this time after Jagged Fang Designs revealed their Thylacine, the argument was in fact started by a member of Aurora Designs, Leopard Claw, having previously stated in the Aurora Designs topic that they might make a Thylacine, reacted to the reveal as if Jagged Fang Designs had purposely made the Thylacine in order to deny him of making his own, which of course it would not have, and in fact accused the team of doing just that, the argument lasted for several hours and was once more stopped and cleansed by Ludozoo after Leopard Claw had apologised for his behaviour in the topic. In the Spanish forum ZooHispania, JFD member Slash reacted aggresively to mixed response to the thylacine from ZH members Bunyupy and Deinonychus 110. Fellow JFD member Iben then responded to Slash's comment in order to stop misunderstandings, while ZooHispania's admins and moderators ditched the argument and defended Bunyupy and DN. The Default Theme The last thing the team revealed before releasing the ENB Series was a work in progress remake of the games Default Theme, stated to be designed as a set that would match modern-day zoo's and thus replace the original default theme fully. This was met with very mixed responses, with a fair amount of people stating that they would rather have Jagged Fang Designs code their remake as separate objects as opposed to the remakes they were so that they could still use the ones that might be made by Aurora Designs in the future. This did not provoke a positive response from Jagged Fang Designs with members responding in outrage to what could easily be seen as a blatant insult to the team and their work, this argument eventually died down as tempers began to go down and it was all but forgotten within a week of it happening. = The Feathered Theropods A long-end discussion started at Zoo Hispania, where many works from the international community, including JFD's were displayed and commented on a thread named "Excellent Projects" . In December 2012, just after the reveal of the Deinonychus, a ZH member called Chucha called it by names like "turkey" in a despective and disrespectful manner, showcasing his personal dislike of feathered dinosaurs. He demanded an alternate, Jurassic Park-like version, even after Okeanos reiterated that JFD aimed for realism in their depictions. A short time after the Utahraptor and Velociraptor were revealed, Bunyupy expressed his discomfort with the supposed "overly avian" reconstructions for the dromaeosaurids and said he liked those with even reptilian and avian features better. He, Chucha and a handful of users also criticized a perceived lack of diverse colours in the dromaeosaur skins (with Chucha again "lamenting" the fact that most designers made their theropods feathered). Despite admins ditching the disputes in several ocassions, tension arose as each time a JFD dinosaur was revealed it was met with complains about feathers and coloration from the same members over and over again. Some time later, Bunyupy was upset by the revelation that JFD then planned to make a feathered Tyrannosaurus rex remake, citing the lack of concrete and direct evidence for feathers in T. rex fossils (despite feathers, as a trait for tyrannosaurs, can be inferred by phylogenetic bracketing). Iben then asked for constructive criticism in their own project thread, then based at Gaia. Minor issues JFD received some criticism for their decision to make all of their projects non-Public domain (PD), despite their advanced coding and many novel features potentially being useful to create new revolutionary content for the community. For unknown reasons, they refused to be included in the ZT Download Library, a Zoo Tycoon download directory, therefore impeding many users to check a complete list of their works. Gallery Aepyornis.jpg|Aepyornis AnkylosaurusJFD.jpg|Ankylosaurus AurochsJFD.jpg|Aurochs Carnotaurus2.png|Carnotaurus models Default Theme.png|Default Theme Render DeinonychusJFD.jpg|Deinonychus Dwarf Elephant.jpg|Dwarf Scilly Elephant ENB Series.png|Zoo Tycoon 2 ENB Series Comparison Lea.jpg|Leaellynasaura amicagraphica Minmi.jpg|Minmi paravertebra 35lwys6.png|Pachycephalosaurus ProtarchaeopteryxJFD.jpg|Protarchaeopteryx QuaggaJFD.jpg|Quagga UtahraptorJFD.jpg|Utahraptor VelociraptorJFD.jpg|Velociraptor Category:User content groups